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ZOSIMUS— Pope

ZOSIMUS— Pope

Palladium, Prnefectus Praetorio, in which heordered Pelagius and Coelestius with all theiradherents to be banished. Zosimus now sum-moned Coelestius to appear again before him;but the latter escaped from Rome; whereuponthe pope at last issued a letter, called by MercatorEpistola Tractoria , condemning him and thePelagian heresy (Marius Mercator, in Commini-tor.; August. 1. 2. ad Bonifac. c. 3). This docu-ment lias not been preserved; but Augustine givesus intimation of its drift (de Peccat. Orig. 25;]Cp. 190, 23). It entered into the wholedoctrine of Redemption, which Pelagius andCoelestius were declared to have contravened,but it allowed them the position of penitentsin case of their recanting. Baronius, Norisius,Gamier, and others, suppose that this Tractoriawas issued before the plenary African counciland the rescript of the emperor, and thatthe latter was issued in consequence of it,and at the pope’s instigation. Tillemont(t. xiii. pp. 738, 739) proves the contrary.That Honorius issued his edict at the instance ofthe pope is unlikely, from the mere fact thatthe pope is in no way referred to in it; andfurther in a letter addressed in the followingyear to Aurelius of Carthage (given by Baron.A.D. 419, lvii.) the emperor, alluding to hisrescript, speaks of it as issued in deference tothe judgment, not of the pope, but of Aurelius ;“ In quo secuta est dementia nostra judiciumsanctitatis tuae.” Further, Augustine (c. duasep. Pelag. ii. c. 3) speaks of Julianus thePelagian reproaching the Roman clergy withhaving at length condemned Pelagianism underthe influence of fear inspired by the emperor’sedict: Eos jussionis terrore perculsos non eru-butsse praevaricationis crimen admittere, utcontra priorem sententiam suam, qua gestiscatholico dogmati adfueraut, postea pronunti-arent malam hominum esse naturam.”

The Tractoria was sent to all parts of thechurch, and was generally accepted and sub-scribed, except by nineteen bishops of Italy,headed by Julianus, bishop of (Elanum inCampania, who became thenceforth the chiefrepresentative of Pelagianism. Julianus wrotetwo letters of remonstrance to Zosimus in behalfof himself and his friends, and appealed to ageneral council;—which demand was success-fully resisted by Augustine and the CountValerian. They were deposed by Zosimus, andbanished by the emperor. Some are said tohave consequently recanted, but not Julianus(Mar. Merc., Commonit. c. 3; Aug. c. Julian, i. 13 ;iii. 5; c. duas ep. Pel. iv. 34, &c.)

The celebrated case of Apiarius in the year418 affords evidence, in addition to what hasappeared above, of the relations at that timebetween the African church and the see of Rome.Apiarius was a priest of Mauritania, who, havingbeen excommunicated by his bishop, Urbanus ofSicca, appealed to Zosimus. The latter orderedthe restoration of Apiarius, but was not obeyed bythe bishop of Sicca, the pope’s jurisdiction in thematter being disputed by the Africans. He thendeputed Faustinus, bishop of Potentia, with twopresbyters, charged with a Commonitorium , to goto Carthage in his name. They attended acouncil there, prepared to pronounce the excom-munication of Urbanus, and alleging the pope’sauthority in the matter on the ground of the

Nicene canons. At the request of the councilthe pope’s Commonitorium was read, in whichthe alleged Nicene canon was quoted. But thiscanon was not known in Africa as among thoseof Nice, and the case was adjourned tillinquiry should be made; and in the meantimeApiarius was restored to the office of priesthood,but forbidden to officiate in the church of Sicca.For further proceedings in the matter after thedeath of Zosimus see Cgelestinus I. Thecanon quoted by Zosimus as Nicene was in factone of Sardica, with respect to which see underJulius (5). The Sardican canons continued tobe quoted by subsequent popes—Boniface, Coeles-tinus, Innocent I., Leo 1.—as Nicene, though ithad been proved that they were not so, Zosimus, inthe case before us, having been the first thus toquote them. He at least is not of necessity tobe charged with dishonesty for doing so, since itis not unlikely that the Sardican canons werepreserved at Rome as an appendage to those ofNice, and were regarded there as forming partof them.

Zosimus is further memorable for his adjudica-tion on the question of the jurisdiction of thesee of Arles in Gaul, and for some of the Gallicbishops having been as little ready as theAfricans were to submit to his authority.Patroclus had become the metropolitan of Arles.He had been elected and ordained a.d. 412, onthe expulsion by the people of the formermetropolitan, Heros—the Gallican bishop, abovenamed, who subsequently, with Lazarus, accusedPelagius of heresy in Palestine and Africa.Hence Zosimus, who as aforesaid, acted andexpressed himself so strongly against Heros andLazarus, was likely to be predisposed to supportPatroclus. There had been a long rivalry andstruggle for jurisdiction between the twoancient sees of Arles and Vienne. A recentsynod at Turin had decided against the claim ofArles to general jurisdiction over other pro-vinces. 11 Consequently other Metropolitans—Simplicius of Vienne, Hilarius of Narbonne,and Proculus of Marseilles—had claimed theright of ordaining bishops in their 'respectiveprovinces independently; and, notably, Proculus,acting on the powers assigned him by theTurin synod as Metropolitan of NarbonensisSecunda, had ordained Lazarus (the friend and

“ Illud deinde inter episcopos urbium Arelatensis etViennensis, qui de primatus apud nos bonore certabant,a S. Synodo definitum est, ut qui ex eis approbaveritsuam civitatem esse metropolim, is totius provinciaehonorum primatus obtineut” (Cone. Taurinense, can, 2).The Turin synod which passed this canon, assigned byBaronius to the year 391, is said by Gieseler to have beenheld a.d. 491, and therefore long after the time ofZosimus. But it may express correctly the principle onwhich the earlier synod, referred to in the text, hadgone; namely, that of following in ecclesiastical arrange-ment the political divisions of the empire. This principlebad prevailed in the East, and had in fact been that onwhich metropolite and patriarchal jurisdiction seems tohave been at first assigned to certain cities. But thepopes had often protested against it, as for instancein their maintenance of their own jurisdiction over theIllyrian provinces, after their transference to the Easternempire, and their opposition to the claims of Constan-tinople, made on the mere ground of its being the im-perial city. In opposition to this principle a specialjurisdiction was claimed tor Arles on the ground of itsecclesiastical origin.